No one can say for certain what the future holds for banking and financial services, but some people are in a better position to make guesses than others. One of those whose job is to make bets on what will come next is Lisa Frazier, head of innovation for Wells Fargo & Co. Here are her predictions of what will influence banks and their customers most in the year to come.

Relationship-Building with AI

Frazier said “the most transformative thing” banks are zeroing in on is artificial intelligence, whether that’s better detection and management of fraud, or using chatbots and other applications to get customers’ answers more quickly or to find cost efficiencies.

“There’s a lot of work being done around how we manage just our interactions with customers, making that more seamless and easy,” she said. “Maybe not next year, but in the future, we’re moving to a one-to-one relationship in banking, in general, and that, to me, is what’s going to differentiate organizations.”

She said she believes other industries are influencing customer expectations of financial services because they’re further down that one-to-one path.

“If you think of Amazon or Uber, all these guys know exactly where you are, what you’re looking for, what you’re shopping for,” Frazier said. “And in banking, we’re still one-to-many.”

She said to look for the financial services sector to play catch up in this area in particular.

Blockchain Proofs of Concept

Frazier said distributed ledger technology, or the blockchain is also on the watch list.

“I’m not talking about crypto,” she said. “I’m talking about the actual application of the technology.”

She said she expects to see a proliferation of proofs of concept around blockchain and DLT happening within the industry next year and within Wells Fargo.

Also see: MUFG, Banco Bradesco Team Up to Use Blockchain for Cross-Border Payments

“We’re definitely part of a number of what we call consortia or partnerships with other banks,” Frazier said of the bank’s explorations into blockchain. “We’ve done some internal money movement and some proofs of concept for moving money across countries within Wells Fargo.”

Voice Banking Adoption

Voice banking, Frazier said, could have banks thinking differently next year, whether it’s through Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant or other similar products.

“The adoption rate of the use of voice is quite dramatic,” she said. “There’s been a lot of research done around mobile search driven by voices, now 20 percent, and that’s expected to go to 50 percent by 2020, I think, and so I’d say there will be a lot more activity in ’19 around voice.”

Bonus: ID Verification and Cybersecurity

Frazier said banks have an interest in getting better with identity verification and managing identity and cybersecurity issues.

“That one’s not gonna go away,” she said. “You can always put that one on the list.”

Frazier will deliver a presentation at Bank Innovation Ignite in Seattle in March 2019. Click here to register.